Busing —Not Integration— Opposed:
Invoke Our Color-Blind Constitution to End It  /  Chapter Five

  
68
Busing Advocacy Is Understandable,
but Without Understanding
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objective is to be achieved by "unambiguous" judicial requirements, allowing schools to "move past the period of community opposition and white flight, which may be strong within the first year of a plan but then decline rapidly." This is disturbingly reminiscent of the repeatedly extended agricultural plans in the U.S.S.R. under the Stalin regime in the 1930s, in which the social objectives were to be achieved by autocratically imposing them upon the affected farmers until their acquiescence.

There is no question but that the NAACP, ACLU and other busing advocates sincerely believe that court-ordered racial assignment is a proper method of continuously achieving "desegregation" in those schools where neighborhood school assignments would otherwise create racial identities they claim are indicative of "segregation." But their sincere effort to achieve this goal by autocratic means under the circumstances in places like Oklahoma City and DeKalb County, runs afoul of Justice Brandeis' famous Olmstead admonition to the effect that the fact that the purpose of "desegregation" is beneficent does not justify such means. In fact, Justice Brandeis indicated that the zeal of a good purpose diminishes understanding as to other effects of such governmental action. He put it this way in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928), 277 U.S. 438 at 479:

    Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.

The zeal of busing advocates like the NAACP and the ACLU is understandable when one is aware of the part of their attorneys, led by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, in the past in opposing, in behalf of black students, the segregation of the nature condemned by Brown. This opposition was based upon our Constitution and its amendments, particularly the 14th Amendment.

The Constitution was ratified in 1789; its first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791; and the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Justice Marshall spoke somewhat
 

Olmstead Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
 
Brown I Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Topeka, Kansas
 
Dowell Dowell v. Bd. of Educ. of Okl. City Public Schools,
(10th Cir. 1989), 890 F.2d 1483
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
 
Freeman Freeman v. Pitts, 112 S.Ct. 1430 (1992)
DeKalb County, Georgia
  
  Busing: Chapter 5, pages 67 - 80 — PreviousNext
  
Busing —Not Integration— Opposed
Invoke our Color-Blind Constitution to End It

A Reasoned Opposition to Race-Based
Affirmative Action in Public Schools
by Elmer Enstrom, Jr.
Contents
History of the 30-year Carlin affirmative action lawsuit:
a pro bono case history of applying Constitutional principles.
  
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